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I would be grateful to receive knowledgeable information and/or reference to publications concerning the following topic:

For many L2 learners, at least at the early stages of learning, there is full transfer of the phonological system (among other systems), that is, they use the phonology of L1 when speaking L2.

It is therefore predicted that, if L1 has vowel harmony, vowel harmony would be transfered to L2. For example, it may be predicted that, for some early stage English learners with Turkic background, the words ''betting'', ''cutting'' and ''putting'' would be pronounced [bEtiNg], [kAt1Ng], [putuNg] (instead of [bEtIN], [kVt1N], [pUtIN]).

Such a phenomenon might be even more robust if the vowel undergoing harmony is 'target-less' in L2, e.g. the optional vocalic element in the English suffixes -er, -al, -en.

I would like to know if such processes are indeed robust in L2. Information about limited regressive vowel harmony (umlaut) in L2 is also welcome. I am mostly interested in widely spoken languages (e.g. national languages of countries with established systems of EFL teaching).

I shall post a summary of the informative replies. Thanks in advance, Roy Becker.

I’m doing a Ph.D in Lusophone Languages and I would like to investigate the intonation/pragmatics interface in Brazilian Portuguese. I’ve just started collecting the reference materials on Brazilian Portuguese intonation: could anyone give me some hints?

Once I've collected enough material, I will send a summary to the List.